1. Field of the invention
The present invention is a special purpose digital slide rule which uses graphical addition to carry out addition in a modular arithmetic and thus to compute and display symmetric schedules.
Symmetric schedules are used in planning agricultural experiments for optimal statistical inference, in calibration designs for comparing pairs of objects, and in tournaments which match pairs against pairs. For the sake of clarity and to demonstrate usefulness, the preferred embodiment pictured in the drawings and described below is a digital instant schedule computer best suited to schedule a variety of round robin tennis tournaments.
2. Description of the prior art
A court manager at a tennis club often wants a symmetric schedule to keep the courts full with doubles games in prime time and let all members present play equally and with a good variety of court companions. Many such schedules exist and may be purchased in a variety of forms. Even after he has provided himself with a schedule, either by purchase or by trial and error, the court manager still needs an effective way of informing the players of their court assignments round by round. Many a tournament committee has spent an evening preparing elaborate charts to solve the communications problem, only to have the charts made obsolete by a shortage or surplus of players when play is to begin.
The court manager needs (i) to be able to produce a symmetric schedule, (ii) to do this on short notice, and (iii) to communicate this schedule quickly and clearly to the players.